BY: COLLEEN LINDBERG
We have all been there, the alarm rings, we hit snooze and roll back into bed. We are then woken up in a hurry and all over the place. The day rolls on, you feel that initial stress from the morning and by the time the evening hits, it’s over. You are dead tired and most of the things you wanted to do today didn’t get done. Does any of this sound familiar?
I totally get it and have definitely been there more times than I would like to admit. How do we manage this though? Let me give you a few tips.
1) Set up your morning at night.
In my PM rituals, I align the clothes I am going to wear the next day. If I am taking food anywhere or need something, I try to position it the night before. I even grind my coffee beans and get my coffee ready, so I just have to hit a button to turn it on. I will pack my bag and leave it by the door if I am leaving right away in the morning. This helps frame the morning and there are fewer things to do when I first wake up.
2) In the morning I set my alarm a bit earlier so that I have time to frame my day.
There has been a time in my life where all I did was react. I wake up, pick up my phone and start reacting. How do I start my morning with intention instead of reaction? I take the time first thing in the morning to visualize my day. My alarm goes off and I take a deep breath. I get grounded in bed and if I am tired I will sit up with my feet on the ground and just feel my body. Then I will imagine what I want the day to be like. Some mornings I will even go into an extended visualization where I build my life in my mind that day. From there, it could be 10 minutes or it could be an hour, I will then stretch, open up my body and get ready to take on the day.
3) I will decide in the morning the top three things that need to get done.
We all have super huge to-do lists. Those same lists can be so overwhelming sometimes that we can’t handle them. The best solution I have found is breaking down that list to the top three things that absolutely have to get done today. I will always suggest that one of those three things is something that adds passion, gets you fired up or you are super connected to. This will help drive the results. When we can chop things up into smaller bites, it makes things easier to swallow sometimes. If you have time, get more done but aim for the three and then some.
Whatever you do, just know that if you did the best you could that day and things were still all over the place, there is always tomorrow. We are humans and therefore we will have to work at this, some of us might be a long study. I suggest, just keep plugging away at it!
